Things I've Learned in my Garden

The following is a list of lessons learned from an amateur gardener battling the weeds in her first real garden. You can decide for yourself whether or not you find these lessons strangely true about life and sin and spiritual things in general. 

1. Expect to get hurt. Or at least embarrassed.

It doesn't matter how well prepared I am, how confident I feel or how much I paid for my gardening gloves. I'm going to get a little beat up out there. If it's not my arms getting ripped up by thorns, it's unexpectedly walking around a corner and surprising a chicken who panics and explodes into squawking and flapping and scratches the heck out of my chest and face. And I know the neighbors pretended they weren't watching when I was using all my body weight to pull up a huge root and it suddenly gave way and I fell hard on my butt in the front yard. My garden is meant to be a public display of nature’s bounty and beauty, so tending it will occasionally be a public display, as well. 

2. Don't get cocky, some weeds need serious work. 

In my enthusiasm to destroy those little villains, I sometimes moved too quickly. I would get my hands wrapped around the base of some large and un-belonging plant and pull back with all my strength. I could see the ground heaving as an expansive root-system was being dislodged. Too many times, I'd think, "I've got you now, sucker. Prepare to die." And make one final rip. But that's when the stem would pop and the roots would drop nicely back into place and I'd be standing there (or again, fallen on my butt) with nothing but a handful of stems and leaves. Eventually I learned that some of that stuff out there has been allowed to grow for far too long. I was going to need some more serious tools, or maybe just some help.

The rest of this post is shared over at ReDiscovered, click here to finish reading!

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